Kibibits to Megabytes (Kibit to MB)

1 kibibit equals 0.000128 megabytes exactly.

How to convert kibibits to megabytes

To convert kibibits to megabytes, multiply the number of kibibits by 0.000128. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply megabytes by 7,812.5.

megabytes = kibibits × 0.000128

Example: 10 kibibits = 0.00128 megabytes.

Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.

About these units

Kibibit (Kibit)

ComputingCurrent unit

Exactly 1,024 bits.

Before 1999, a kilobit was often loosely taken to mean 1,024 bits as well as 1,000, and the IEC prefix kibi settled the matter. A kibibit (Kibit) is exactly 2^10 bits, which is 1,024 bits or 128 bytes. The IEC adopted the prefix in December 1998, and the BIPM's vocabulary of metrology notes that 1 kilobit should not be used to mean 1,024 bits.

The name starts with the first two letters of kilo and adds bi for binary, and the symbol writes the K as a capital to match the other binary prefixes. The difference from the decimal kilobit is 2.4 percent, the smallest of any pair.

The unit is a small one, equal to 128 bytes, and appears mainly where an exact binary bit count has to be stated without the ambiguity of kilobit.

1 kibibit = 128 bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Binary prefix; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples; Wikipedia: Bit

Megabyte (MB)

ComputingCurrent unit

1,000,000 bytes (decimal). A typical MP3 song is 3–5 MB; a smartphone photo is 2–5 MB.

Megabyte started out as informal jargon. Base-1,024 usage grew because 1,024 is close to 1,000 and convenient for binary multiples. In 1999 the IEC standardized binary prefixes, assigning megabyte to 10 to the sixth bytes and mebibyte to 2 to the twentieth. By the end of 2009 the IEEE, the EU, ISO and NIST had adopted that standard, though the word still carries different meanings in practice.

The famous 1.44 MB floppy disk is a mixed case: it counts 1,024,000 bytes per megabyte, and it actually holds 1,474,560 bytes. Today most storage media and networking use the decimal definition, while Windows uses the binary one for memory such as RAM. For scale, a PlayStation 2 memory card held 8 MB, the plain text of Moby Dick runs to 1.192 MB, and one megabyte holds about one minute of 128 kbit/s MP3 audio.

1 megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Megabyte; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples

Related conversions

See all digital storage units.